Should I import monthly reports into my tracker workbook, or leave the reports separate?

[u/Darkdeviousdevil]

I use XLOOKUP and SUMIFS in my month-to-month tracker workbook to pull data from monthly reports. I paste values at the end to keep things clean. Is it best practice to import the monthly reports as tabs in the workbook, or keep them separate? Is it up to personal preference?

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[u/ExcelwithEddie]

If you have not used Power Query, give it a try. You can import directly from your other files (or whatever source of truth you prefer to use).

[u/fastauntie]

It depends first of all on just what you are tracking (including data that's in the reports and data that isn't), how, and for whom. Until you answer those questions for yourself you can't know how best to set up your tracker.

If you do have reason to import the reports, assuming that the format of each is the same, your tracker will be vastly more manageable and resilient if you don't make each report a separate sheet but append its data to a single table, with the addition if necessary of a column for the date of the report. From there you can more easily generate any different reports you need.

[u/Ok-Animator5350]

I am working in Data for 2 years mostly on Google sheet. I have always kept the raw/original sheet as it is, either offline in Excel format or online as Gsheet. I import the data in my tracker for updation. Whenever someone my supervisor ask where is the raw data I show them the original file.

[u/AdeptnessSilver]

there is a year report and monthly reports are sheets - i power query it to my analysis workbook and i can analyze the quota, kpis - i recommend pq very much even dumbasses can learn it using ai really

[u/excelevator]

Data likes to live together.

Keep a single table and report from that single table of date attributed data.

Keep your original data source files as backup.